Tech

28 Days of Fame: The Strange, True Story of 'Flappy Bird'

In just a few weeks, the mobile app Flappy Bird became a global phenomenon. It was a simple game, but frustrating and endless. Sharing many similarities with the famous Helicopter Game — only with Super Nintendo-style graphics — it's safe to say Flappy Bird took over the web.

The game was designed and built by Dong Nguyen, a developer who lives in Vietnam. Nguyen previously made a number of iOS and flash games for his mobile studio .Gears.

The story of Flappy Bird — its sudden rise and equally sudden fall — is hard to pin down. That's partially because Nguyen, overwhelmed by the popularity of the game, has declined press requests for interviews. [Update: Shortly after we posted this story, Forbes tracked down Nguyen in Hanoi, where he revealed that Flappy Bird is "gone forever' because, essentially, it was addictive.]

Still, using Twitter data from Topsy, Nguyen's Twitter stream and app-ranking data from App Annie, we've managed to put together a timeline of the game.

Much of the data surrounding Flappy Bird and its viral success came courtesy of Zach Williams, a developer who analyzed the numbers behind the game.

Williams scraped all of the written app reviews from Flappy Bird in iTunes before the game was removed; this yielded a database of more than 68,000 written reviews, and he was kind enough to share a CSV file of that data with Mashable. Using it, we were able to look for trends around when the app started to gain traction, its ratings and the general user sentiment surrounding it.

The game's sheer success has led some critics to accuse Nguyen of using shady practices — including buying traffic or paying for fake reviews — in order to help Flappy Bird ascend the app charts. After looking at the data that corresponds to when Flappy Bird started to build word-of-mouth buzz, however, we can't find any signs of impropriety, or manipulation of reviews or ratings.

The fact that Flappy Bird wasn't a scam — but a naturally occurring spectacle that came out of nowhere — only makes its triumph that much more incredible and its removal from the App Store that much more bittersweet.

What follows is a strange story about a simple game called Flappy Bird and the roller-coaster ride that followed.

The Beginning

The digital origins of Flappy Bird date back to November 2012. At the time, Nguyen shared an image of a game he was working on via Twitter:

The Calm Before the Storm

After releasing Flappy Bird, Nguyen appeared to abandon both it and his Twitter account. According to app-review data pulled from the App Store (before the game was removed), the game attracted just 13 reviews between May 25 and Oct. 31. Written reviews aren't a perfect measure of download figures — as far more users download a game than take the time to write a review — but the app was practically invisible.

In September 2013, Nguyen released his first update to Flappy Bird. It fixed a few bugs, and he added a new icon for iOS 7.

The game continued to toil in obscurity for another six weeks. Then, something interesting happened. Flappy Bird entered the "Family" category at 1469 on Oct. 29, 2013, which means it was the 1469th most popular Family game in the App Store, according to App Annie.

A few days later, Flappy Bird made its first appearance on Twitter aside from Nguyen's initial tweets.

This tweet, sent on Nov. 4, is emblematic of the reviews, tweets and commentary many others would share three months later.

On Nov. 14, Flappy Bird entered the U.S. game charts, coming in at 1368, according to AppAnnie. By this time, the game had climbed to 393 in the Family category.

The game started to gain traction in those two categories through the month of November. Reviews increased, too. Flappy Bird managed to earn 20 reviews in November. Many of those reviews expressed a love-hate relationship with the game.

One review, entitled "Love/hate/live," sums it up:

I have a love/hate relationship with this game and it's so addicting It's a great game though. I can't get past 15:(

Gaining Traction

On Dec. 3, 2013, Flappy Bird officially entered the overall App Store charts, coming in at 1308 in the U.S. At this time, the game was ranked 74 in Family and 395 in U.S. games.

The game continued to rise in popularity. On Dec. 11, Nguyen returned to his Twitter account, and replied to a user asking for an Android version of the app.

Flappy bird and I have an extreme love/hate relationship— Madeleine Fuertes (@malenlovesjb) December 19, 2013

Flappy Bird also started gaining 20 reviews a day. The game proved polarizing, with most of the ratings either a full five stars or one star, with many expressing the "I hate this game, but cannot stop playing" sentiment.

Finding Success

Flappy Bird's popularity continued to climb into January 2014. On Jan. 10, the app achieved a major milestone: It became a top-10 app in the United States. It was ranked the eighth-most-downloaded free app in the U.S. and the sixth-most-downloaded free game.

"Flappy Bird" breaks into the top 10 in the App Store.

Image: App Annie

Other game developers took notice, and asked Nguyen if he did anything to promote Flappy Bird to get it into the top 10. Nguyen replied that he "doesn't do promotion." He also expressed excitement, as the app continued to climb higher in the App Store.

By Jan. 24, the media was finally starting to take notice of Flappy Bird. Buzzfeed and Kotaku wrote articles expressing surprise at the app's level of success. Developers began dissecting the game, and praising its virality.

It's here that Flappy Bird really started to take off on Twitter. Tweets with the phrase "Flappy Bird" passed the 500,000 a day mark as of Jan. 25, according to Topsy.

The flurry of media coverage intensified, with a significant uptick happening at the end of January. Publications such as The Huffington Post, The Telegraphand Mashable all wrote about the game that appeared out of nowhere.

By Feb. 1, Flappy Bird was the number-one free game in 53 countries in the App Store.

On Feb. 6, Apple even acknowledged the game's success, tweeting about it from its official App Store Twitter account.

Asking Why

As January became February, Flappy Bird was responsible for millions of downloads a day on iOS and Android. As it became a success, media outlets started to reach out to Nguyen to talk to him about the game.

Nguyen was fairly guarded with most press, but did do a few interviews, including with game blog Chocolate Lab Apps and TechCrunch. In both interviews, Nguyen chalked up the game's success to pure luck.

He told TechCrunch, "I don't know how my games can be so popular. Most of my players are kids in schools. I would like to thanks them for playing my game and sharing it to other people."

Reporters started looking into the psychological reasons behind Flappy Bird's success, and app developers also wanted to know its secret. Once the app reached the top 10 in the App Store, developers started asking Nguyen about his strategies for making it successful.

A common question was whether he bought traffic (i.e. paying for exposure that leads to downloads) for Flappy Bird, or used cross-promotional techniques to raise the download counts on his other apps.

@sergeytyo It is hard to believe, I understand. I have no resources to do anything else beside uploading the game.— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) January 31, 2014

@Dillan_S I never created any fan pages or twitter accounts for my games. Those are not mine :-)— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) January 31, 2014

For his part, Nguyen maintained that he did nothing to help juice the ratings or download figures for Flappy Bird.

However, some commentators were skeptical. On Feb. 1, app marketer Carter Thomas speculated that Flappy Bird's success was due in part to reviews left by bots.

It's not uncommon for some developers to try to juice rankings or ratings for an app by paying for bots to leave positive reviews. However, this pattern usually becomes obvious because the reviews all contain the same sentence, phrase or group of phrases.

Kotaku was especially harsh on the game, writing an op-ed originally entitled "Flappy Bird is Making $50,000 a Day Off of Ripped-Off Art." (Kotaku has since changed the headline and parts of the article.)

Some users began calling out Nguyen over Twitter. In the beginning, he seemed to take the attention with good humor.

These tweets were mocked by some outlets, which only exacerbated the negative attention toward Nguyen.

After originally promising to build a Windows Phone version of the game, Nguyen seemed ready to throw in the towel last week.

I would like to sorry WP users for the late of WP build. I am trying hard to make it happen.— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 7, 2014

Nguyen had uploaded an update to Flappy Bird for iOS on Feb. 3. The update was approved on Feb. 8. It included graphical changes to the game, and actually made it a bit easier. Because the update was released when Flappy Bird was at its peak popularity, feedback from some users was negative.

Users on Twitter and other social-media sites were stunned that the game had disappeared. Some suggested that it was all a publicity stunt. It wasn't. By Feb. 9, Flappy Bird was removed from the App Store and Google Play.

In its place, a plethora of carbon copies and similar games popped up. Users are even selling phones with the game installed for outrageous sums on eBay.

It's now been 28 days since Flappy Bird hit the App Store's top 10. The game has had at least 50 million downloads, and amassed nearly 16 million tweets.

It is the perfect example of how a mundane app with an addictive premise can go viral, thanks to social media and word of mouth. What's more, Flappy Bird was a success because it didn't fit the mold. Anyone trying to create the next Flappy Bird will likely fail — this was a perfect storm of circumstance, luck and viral drive.

It seems fitting that the app left the world with as much mystery as it entered.

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